Privacy and the media: Cathcart identifies two distinct journalisms

There are times when I read pieces by Brian Cathcart that I think I'm reading my own articles - only his are more elegant and thoughtful. We appear to share almost exactly the same views on the state of modern journalism.

In his latest Index on Censorship analysis, Code breakers, he argues that journalism is being tarnished by the antics of "professional privacy invaders" (meaning, in the main, the News of the World).

It is a long piece, and none the worse for that, because the detail is important.

Cathcart, formerly a journalist with Reuters and The Independent, now professor of journalism at Kingston University, begins by pointing to the existence of two journalisms - one that acts in the public interest and the other that panders to public prurience.

He deals with the Max Mosley case, arguing that "besides the fact that it appeared in a newspaper, there is almost nothing here that qualifies as journalism."

It is a terrific dissection of the News of the World's disgraceful entrapment, destroying the newspaper's claim that it was about the public's "right to know."

He takes a sideswipe at the "grossly libellous" coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, identifying the Daily Express as a major culprit.

He writes: "Nobody was disciplined and nothing changed and... the editor mocked the idea that it should be otherwise."

On phone-hacking, he mentions the attempt (failed) by News International to hush up the story by paying out a vast sum of money to the first major claimant, Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers' Association.

In a telling section, Cathcart deals with the "curious" defence for intrusions into privacy by the Daily Mail's editor, Paul Dacre.

His argument, in a 2008 speech, was that popular papers papers needed to retain the right to publish scandal in order to retain their mass circulations and thereby provide the funds to publish less scandalous journalism.

Here's Cathcart's considered response:

"This implies that professional intrusion into privacy is a price society has to pay if people are to be informed about things that are genuinely in the public interest. That can't be right.

It is true that the News of the World carries coverage of public affairs, indeed it occasionally prints front-page stories which are genuinely in the public interest — its coverage of match-fixing in cricket was a case in point.

But journalists know that every story has to stand on its own ethical merits. Because you have published one worthy story does not mean that in the next one you have a licence to intrude.

That is like saying that if you get 20 stories right you are free to commit a libel in the 21st, providing the story helps to keep your paper afloat.

If the News of the World is to survive, it should pay its way by reporting in the public interest, full stop."

Cathcart accepts that "no satisfactory boundaries will ever be fixed" to solve "the privacy problem". But that should not mean that we abandon a journalism based on ethics.

Instead, he believes that we should consistently highlight the difference between the two journalisms.

He concludes: "A clearer distinction will benefit the reading public. The more distance that opens up between ethical journalism and professional intrusion into privacy, the more the public will understand what it is getting and what it can trust. And that is in the public interest."